Kollektivizálás és ellenségteremtés (Tyukod, 1951)

Absztrakt

Similar to many Szabolcs-Szatmár County settlements at the time of the collectivization campaign in the winter of 1951, co-op organisers managed to get most of the farmers in Tyukod join the collective. However, the local farmers, together with those from the neighbouring village of Porcsalmás, almost immediately revolted against the Establishment transforming the traditional modes of agriculture by force: by March the co-op groups, which had been set up by painstaking efforts earlier, began to disintegrate as a result of the local population’s ferocious mass response. The Establishment was caught off guard by the ferocity of the opposition, and they could only repress the revolt by bringing in polic force from outside. The investigators of the State Police (ÁVH), analyzing the mass revolt against collectivisation, created a narrative in which the peasants of Tyukod were incited by the ’enemy’ (i.e. kulaks, gendarmerie, former civil servants, priests, etc.) against the socialist transformation of agriculture. In the person of the secretary of the Tyukod Council this concept found an enemy figure integrated into the system, working from within. By analysing the charges against him in the course of the collectivisation campaigns of the 1950s, this study is an attempt to unearth the opportunities and decisions of this person at the bottom of the hierarchy of power.